What Kind of a Guy is Anthony Fauci?

This kind of guy:

We just got off the phone from a holiday call with friends. He's an about-to-retire physician, she's a musician. Naturally, what's been going on with the family was the bulk of the call, and they trotted out this anecdote.

Their younger daughter, after some years of trying first this and then that, without finding her passion, finally decided to go into nursing. Not just nursing, but a specialty in emergency services. She has TOTALLY found her passion, and plunged right into it. ("OMG, weren't you worried?" I wanted to ask... but didn't. They're parents, of course they worried, but they are so proud of her...)

And then this summer she fell ill.

Not COVID, but a brain tumor.

Dad- the retiring physician- got his daughter into the NIH for treatment, based on the specific type of tumor and some work going on there related to it.

Daughter shows up at NIH, and, since she is a health care professional herself, she gets a tour. Not on the floor she'll be on, but on a different floor, her guide casually mentions "That's Dr. Fauci's office."

Daughter who is a total gushing fangirl says "Oooooh, can I see?" They grin and show her the outer office, and she timidly asks "Can I meet him?" But of course they have to regretfully tell her that "busy" doesn't even begin to describe him, so sorry... So she asks, "Can I write him a note?" and they hand her a pad and pen and right there, she dashes off a fan letter.

Then she goes down to her floor to be prepped for surgery. Surgery goes well, they move her to a regular room, to recover.

The next day, a visitor shows up.

Yep.

Dr. Fauci.

Wanted her to know he got her note, wanted to thank her for that and for her work.

Yeah, they got a selfie, even.

And that's the kind of guy Dr. Fauci is.

You know, the guy PRESIDENT-ELECT Joe Biden has made his chief medical advisor?

That Dr. Fauci.

Wow.

amazedly,
Bright

There is an opportunity waiting for GOP pols smart enough to see it...

...and gutsy enough to grab it.

Admittedly, two qualities in notably short supply among that demographic.

All the same, it would only take, maybe... six or seven? To start.

If it were the right six or seven... others might join them.

Which GOPpie pols would be eligible?

They're the line slime, the back benchers, low profile folks from moderate suburban districts who mostly toe the line from leadership, but who have avoided making big public leaps onto the MAGAt bandwagon. They always wash their mouths out after a session teabagging Moscow Mitch and they manage to evade questions about whether they were under his desk with a certain amount of skill.

They're generally Republicans because their parents were, and everyone they knew in school was. They got a leg up from various internship or legal clerkship programs, because they're part of what used to be called "the Establishment" back when there was such a thing. They still think the Constitution means something. Mostly for people like them, but they're willing to let others ride in the back of the bus if they're not too uppity.

What they really want is for things to go back to some semblance of what they think of as 'normal' in the sense of Wall Street running things, America being respected around the world, people going to some Country Club Church (or Pentecostal Tabernacle if they live in the hinterlands) on Sunday but not talking about it otherwise, reverence for the law and the institutions of the Republic, civility in public discourse, and a moderate respect for science as long as it doesn't interfere with their quarterly dividends.

In other words, old-style "conservatism" that recognized its survival was to some extent predicated on compromise and not allowing economic and social inequity to become too grotesque, and on a shared understanding of reality and stipulation of provable fact.

That kind of Republican. I don't love them any more than I love fungus, but I recognize they have a critical role in the political ecosystem.

And they have an opportunity, right now, if they exist, if they can grasp it. Here's how it could play out:

They withdraw from the GOP. They form an independent caucus with a vague, non-ideological label that harks back to old-school GOP politics. (If they're really smart, they'll reach out to the Lincoln Project crowd and get some suggestions.) They quietly make it clear that they are no longer beholden to Moscow Mitch & Co. and they become part of the clean-up squad rooting out the most egregious corruption and treason, but while doing so, they also hold the line on their irrational pie-in-the-sky "fiscal responsibility" bullshit, deficit hawkery, slow-down-progress agenda.

I think if they did this, especially with some help from the Lincoln Project crowd, they could form the nucleus of a resurgent Republican Party, perhaps with a slightly different name, and regain their grasp on Major Party status within three election cycles. One of them could possibly get elected President in 2032 or 2036.

The question is, are there any left with the brains and courage to try it?

Time will tell.

speculatively,
Bright

Epitaph as the grifters slither away...

It's a cancer. Can we defeat it without sacrificing the First Amendment? I think so... here's how:

With every iteration of humankind's ability to communicate, there's been upheaval. I imagine our far-off ancestors who first progressed from gesture, facial expression, and simple syllabic phonemes to the development of complex verbal communication quickly overwhelmed and out-competed their neighbors who felt that grunts and hand-waving were enough for anyone and all these new-fangled "words" would just corrupt the youth and destroy all that was morally admirable in the contemporary social fabric.

Writing? Oh, we really took a wrong turn there. Being able to record experiences, transactions, and communications from the Divine fucked everything up and killed billions.

The printing press? The telegraph? Radio? Teevee? The devil's tools, every one, causing and/or contributing to an endless series of mass social upheavals, uncountable death and destruction. (Anyone remember the role of radio in the Rwandan genocide of 1994?)

And now here we are with mass social media being exploited by someone (who? More on that later...) to create powerful malign propaganda for the purpose of undermining democracy and destroying any social order based on social responsibility and mutual assistance.

Yes, I'm talking about QAnon, and here's an excellent and very thorough expose of just how this particular cancer was created, disseminated, and how it metastasized in America's body politic: A Game Designer's Analysis of QAnon.

Like any cancer, it has help from an immune system stressed by other assaults, and like many cancers, it weaponizes other systems of the body politic, distorting them and turning them into allies facilitating its spread and its destruction of healthy cells and structures.

It is serious. It is potentially fatal.

And it is all too tempting to apply remedies analogous to radical surgery, near-lethal chemotherapy or destructive radiation, in the form of First Amendment curtailments.

These remedies never really work, though. At best, they leave a vitiated, impaired body with a shortened lifespan and greatly diminished quality of life- at worst, they can be as fatal as the cancer itself. In the evolution of human communications, every time a new capability has developed, attempts to restrain, control or eliminate that capability have not ended well.

What, then?

My belief is that we can begin fighting back using two tools, and if they are consistently and vigorously applied, in time the health of the body WILL be able to reassert itself.

The first tool is understanding. There's a reason successful con artists never wise up the mark: It makes it difficult to use the same con again, as the mark remembers that the money they saw in the dropped wallet was only there for a moment and was quickly replaced with scrap paper.

The article linked above neatly exposes the mechanism of this particular con and why it is so powerful: It relies on apophenia, the human tendency to perceive patterns in unrelated events or objects. We are a species that evolved based on our ability to perceive and respond to patterns, and this is being turned against us.

When apophenia combines with the Baader-Meinhoff phenomenon and our innate tendency to confirmation bias, we can be highly manipulable. And this is what's happened to the QAnon cultists.

Once you understand this, it becomes easier to resist apophenic dysfunction: Yes, the cloud looks like a galloping horse for a few seconds and there was a horse in the field you just passed and you dreamt about the sound of hoofbeats last night after watching that Western movie, but that doesn't mean God is telling you to buy a horse, or even go riding.

As the game designer's analysis (linked above) points out, attacking the rationality and validity of any of the QAnon propaganda has the paradoxical effect of making them believe even more fervently, and questioning their rationality or accusing them of gullibility merely antagonizes them.

Vigorously promoting a broad understanding of just how this type of phenomenon works, however, can happen at a remove from the 'personal' level of the cultist. Continually exposing the mechanism of the con, rather than rating the gullibility of the mark, has more chance of succeeding in generating the cognitive dissonance that will loosen the hold of the propaganda. Discussing confirmation bias, apophenia, the Baader-Meinhoff phenomenon as normal processes that affect all of us may eventually have an effect.

And here's the other tool:

My granpere was the first (but by no means the last) to tell me that "Idle hands become the devil's tools" and I lost count of the number of times my own foolishness was met with an exasperated "You don't have enough to do" by parents, supervisors, teachers, friends, etc.

Being a dedicated QAnon rabbit-hole diver takes TIME. Many hours of it, spent on social media outlets, searching for "breadcrumbs", communicating with other initiates, etc.

These people truly don't have enough to do.

Imagine, if you will, that there were lots of good jobs within their ability to perform and paying enough to allow them to build an interesting life doing something other than hunching over a tablet?

We need a major public employment initiative. We need high-speed broadband available to every household in America and a corps similar to the CCC to make it happen. The Rural Electrification Act was a major building block in America's economic recovery from the Great Depression and it allowed us to tool up for war production in the face of the looming World War.

We need major public employment programs to manage the pandemic, to implement a robust power grid based on sustainable power sources, to preserve and restore the integrity of our water sources, clean air, and arable land. We need to re-tool public education to allow distance and in-person learning and to make higher education affordable and accessible to all.

These are jobs. Millions of them. And people doing jobs they can do, having accomplishments that matter, are way less vulnerable to being dragged down "you're hard done by and here's the conspiracy that's keeping you down" rabbit holes.

Yes, it would require major deficit spending, but in the long run, as with the New Deal programs, it would pay for itself over and over again in a better future and a more stable, secure and united America.

Without trashing the First Amendment.

Is anyone on the Transition Team listening?

thoughtfully,
Bright

P.S. On the "more about that later" thing related to who's responsible for the creation/dissemination of this toxic propaganda: I'm not sure it's worth a lot of effort identifying culprits right now. As with the "root cause" hypothesis for alcoholism/addiction treatment, it's more important to detox the brain and establish some stable recovery first, though it may be helpful in avoiding relapses. But if a culprit must be identified, I'd suggest examining two things: 1. Who benefits from a disunited and increasingly undemocratic America; and 2. Who has the resources to plan and carryout a vast propaganda offensive in relative secrecy?

Okay, I need to change professions. Apparently the going rate for whoring is $130K and up.

I'm glad. But I'm not joyful. I'm still dealing with the worst trauma of my lifetime.

On Tuesday morning I believed the American electorate would soundly and decisively reject the GOP’s politics of fear, greed, hate and division by a margin vastly greater than Hillary Clinton’s narrow popular vote win in 2016. The narrowness of that victory allowed the GOP to steal the Executive Branch using the Electoral College. I really believed that rejection would happen- not just believed, apparently, but was certain the way I’m certain that when I pick up an Agatha Christie mystery, Poirot or Miss Marple will find the murderer and justice will ultimately be served.

On Wednesday morning it appeared that not only had Americans not done that, but a greater percentage of Americans who have been brutalized and exploited by GOP evil and incompetence actually voted FOR [Redacted] and the GOP: Black men and white women.

And Joe Biden, who ran on a platform of decency and competence, narrowly managed to eke out a win currently being disputed with sufficient credibility to perhaps put the specter of another 2000 Supreme Court intervention in play.

“Narrowly managed to eke out a win.” After four years of Americans watching the GOP and its minions tear children from their parents and put them in cages and effectively orphan more than 500 kids. After more than 240,000 Americans died from a pandemic that was ignored, downplayed and mismanaged by the GOP. After multiple attempts by the GOP to repeal the Affordable Care Act and/or deny coverage to Americans with pre-existing health conditions. During a pandemic. After millions of jobs have been lost. “Narrowly managed to eke out a win.”

I can’t come to terms with this.

Nor will I blame the Democratic Party for not being progressive enough, for being too progressive, for infighting, for whatever lackluster sins the Democratic Party bureaucracy may have managed to commit over the 4 years since 2016, much less past derelictions, real and imagined.

When the choice is between a clearly demonstrated, existential threat from a morally bankrupt, viciously corrupt and incompetent ideology and Something Else, people who care about the future of their communities, their grandchildren and their nation choose Something Else. Responsible, moral, ethical caring human beings choose Something Else, even if it is a flawed Democratic Party. And especially if that Party’s representative has made a compelling case for themselves as a competent, decent, ethical human being willing to govern on principles of listening to all, balancing competing interests with compassion, and restoring the Executive Branch’s ability to promote the well-being of America’s most vulnerable people.

Clearly, the America I believed I lived in, where a substantial majority of voting-age citizens are people who do care about the future of their communities, their grandchildren and their nation, was an illusion. The America I thought I was part of, with a large majority of responsible, moral, ethical, caring human beings, was a mirage. I was delusional.

The original Star Trek series had an episode called “Mirror, Mirror” in which a transporter malfunction threw Enterprise crew members into a parallel universe. Instead of serving a Federation dedicated to promoting peace, exploration, and equity among diverse peoples, Starfleet was the thuggish strongarm of a Terran Empire greedy for conquest and willing to enforce its will with genocide. Instead of a shipboard culture of respect for one another and a clear, organized path of achievement and advancement, promotion was achieved by assassination and punishment for those who failed or disobeyed superiors involved torture.

On Wednesday November 4th, I woke up in that Mirror universe.

I am still processing this.

I recognize my responsibility for my own unrealistic beliefs, though I hadn’t thought they were quite so unrealistic or quite so deeply and inherently a part of who I am.

I recognize that yes, there are still many- even that narrow majority of- Americans who are the kind of people I believed Americans are.

I recognize that yes, that narrowly-won victory, if we can hang onto it, gives us a chance to work toward something better, by millimeters if not by the great strides I hoped we were about to take.

I recognize all those things.

But I have spent the past four years with every spiritual muscle clenched, every nerve taut, every breath contingent on a better future I knew would arrive on November 3rd, 2020.

And I am tired beyond tired, and devastated, and shamed, and grieving.

No, I don’t want to talk about it with people who want to tell me it’s not as bad as I think, or people who offer hope I might not be seeing right now, or people who have good ideas about self-care and healing and moving on and making the most of what opportunities we do have.

Not yet.

I’ll get there.

But not for a while.

I’m not who I thought I was, America isn’t the place I believed in.

I need time to parse this out. I need time to explore the inside narrative. I need the trauma to recede a bit. I need to look elsewhere for a while, rather than stirring through the ashes to find artifacts that survived intact or somewhat intact.

I need to get reacquainted with myself, maybe reinvent who I am, a bit harder, a bit more resilient, a bit less naïve and vulnerable and stupid, but hopefully still ethical and compassionate.

I need to grieve my fantasy America, the place I lived in for more than 6 decades that stopped existing quite a while ago, and maybe never existed.

It could have been worse, I know. And I am glad that we have saved something from the wreckage, and will do my best to support Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in the appallingly difficult task of trying to save an America divided, and assure a better future for the nearly half of Americans who would prefer hatred and fear and racism and patriarchy and greed and division. I will.

But not today. Not for a while, yet.

exhaustedly,
Much Dimmer Bright

Even if we win, this is not a victory.

It is an accomplishment, it's worthy of note and some celebration.

But it's not a victory.

Victory is the ultimate goal and when it is achieved we can hoist a brew and get 36 hours' uninterrupted sleep and then go back to living our lives with whatever our new normal will be.

Today is not going to give us that, and if we make the mistake of taking it, we will be back here in another 8, maybe 12 years, if we last that long.

If we win, what today is, is an OPPORTUNITY.

Another chance.

A crack to hammer a wedge into.

We can begin cleanup and repair, and make no mistake, it will be neither quick nor easy. It will be a harder and longer and more painful slog than this spasmodic upheaval to shove the poisoned spike out of the wound.

Because even when the spike is gone, the poison will still be in our system. The poison of distrust, disunity, greed and fear.

Russia is not going to suddenly quit trying to undermine our ability to function as a nation. Nor is any other foreign state that sees a strong, united, democratic America as a threat to their own authoritarian kleptomania.

Americans are better at immediate, short-term, superhuman spasms of effort than we are at long-term, sustained, focused, shoulder-to-the-wheel collaborative action. That's not to say we're incapable of the latter- we HAVE done it before. And we can learn from those experiences.

But the simple truth is this: As soon as we stop trying, those who would divide us regain old ground and make new gains.

As soon as we stop trying, the backlash comes for us.

So no, if we win today, it is not a victory.

But it is a damn' good start, IF we can keep going.

somberly,
Bright

Decency: The contrast between liberal and conservative

David Brooks is bloviating about decency in the NYT ("Trump's Presidency Smashed the 'Decency Floor'" if you're interested).

Bless his heart.

No, really. I don't think he's deeply evil, the way so many GOPpies have revealed themselves to be. He probably thinks he's "finding common ground" or something, with all of us who have been expressing horror and outrage about America's devolution and the lack of decency in the Republican Party and its helots.

I imagine his thinking process (see? I think he's capable of thought, even!) went something like this: "Well, they are saying they are outraged by the lack of decency, and I can certainly agree that the vulgar bullying, rudeness, crude language, etc., are totally unacceptable in our nation's governance and public discourse! So we agree on something! I will express my outrage, and they will understand that I am a person of thoughtfulness and gravitas and perhaps they will be willing to agree on, or at least listen politely to, some of my other intelligent ideas and brilliant thoughts."

The problem here lies in a commonly-used (and sometimes over-used) word that has quite different meanings for liberals than it does for conservatives.

When a liberal shouts "Have you no decency?" they are generally referring to 'decency' in the sense of "respect for common humanity." Liberals tend to believe 'decency' is the ability to recognize humanity in all types of people, respond to it with empathy and compassion, and work to redress inequities and injustices against that humanity.

When a conservative tut-tuts about the loss of decency, they are generally referring to a set of behavioral norms promoted to make public discourse, negotiation, and compromise easier and smoother, with the ultimate goal of preserving a status quo that has privileged people like them since time out of mind.

Conservatives not only approve of that form of decency, they need it, to use as a stick to beat back the expression of outrage, the punching up with protest, satire, and fiery rhetoric, used by those seeking to disrupt and change that status quo. The status quo which has privileged all those mannerly and decent conservative old white guys.

So of course they are pissed off at [Redacted] for hauling that tool out of their box and smashing it to powder. Just don't be fooled that their regretful tuts and huffs about 'decency' bear any real relationship to visceral outrage about brown children in cages, women being returned to the status of semi-privileged livestock, or old peoples' lives being not worth protecting from a global pandemic.

They don't mind discussing that stuff with you, though. As long as you're decently polite about it.

wearily,
Bright

They have sown the wind...

When I was a little girl, the GOP had a reputation for being planners, long-term thinkers. Slow to act, deliberate, cautious. The Democrats, on the other hand, were considered a bit on the hasty side, so anxious to advance their agenda that they often moved too strongly and abruptly before the electorate was ready for that much change.

How strange, that the roles have so thoroughly reversed in my lifetime.

The GOP now seems to have no memory, and no concept of a future that goes beyond a few days, weeks, months. Victory this minute, no matter what the cost.

But I have a memory. A very vivid memory.

I have a memory of a time when my older sister's classmate didn't show up for school one day. And then we heard she'd died from some mysterious, unnamed condition. And finally the truth was shared, only in whispers- she'd died from a self-induced abortion. She was 15.

I have a memory of a time when my mother was denied a mortgage because even though she had a stable full-time job and an income adequate to make the payments, she was a divorced woman and she did not have a man to co-sign the mortgage agreement.

I have a memory of a time when her delightful co-workers at the carpentry shop broke into my sister's locker and urinated in her work boots to hint to her that people who didn't have penises weren't supposed to be union carpenters.

I have a memory of being laughed at and shamed when the priest at the Catholic school I attended visited our class to ask for volunteers to serve at the altar during Mass, and I volunteered. I was too stupid to realize a penis was required to serve God.

I have a memory of being catcalled and hooted at when taking a walk with another woman, and holding hands, by a carload of pissant privileged adolescents who hollered homophobic slurs at us. (The woman I was holding hands with was my mother...)

I have a memory of being discouraged from enlisting in the U.S. Navy because women could not serve in the specialties I was interested in, and would not be allowed the sea duty required to qualify for promotions.

I have a memory of being told that it was okay for me to do badly in math, because I was a girl and girls just weren't good at math. I was not allowed to sign up for the summer remedial courses, as they were already full. Of boys, apparently.

I have a memory of being date raped.

I have a memory of being called "whore", "bitch", "slut", "skag", "hosebag", "dog", and other epithets and told that I was too ugly to be any kind of a success.

I have many, many memories of being told to keep quiet, not to be 'aggressive', not to be 'unladylike', not to be "bitchy", not to take offense when men commented crudely on women in my presence.

I have memories of teachers and bosses letting me know in ways subtle and not-so-subtle that if I would gratify them sexually I would be considered for better grades, promotions, etc.

I have a memory of a good friend's mother committing suicide some months after being given a hysterectomy without her permission, to cure her "mental dysmorphia" and mood disorders.

I have a memory of the woman two houses up knocking at our back door and asking if we had any burn ointment because she'd had a "terrible accident" with the stove. The "terrible accident" also blacked her eye and sprained her wrist.

I have many, many more memories of what it was like before Roe v. Wade, before women like Ruth Bader Ginsburg fought for equal rights under the law for human beings born without a penis.

I am not the only one with those memories.

We.

Will.

Not.

Go.

Back.

The GOP has NO idea what it is awakening.

None.

Because between the time of those memories, and now, millions of women have experienced a small modicum of equity... a little freedom, a little control over our choices and destinies.

And millions of girls have grown up expecting nothing less. Millions.

No, we will not go quietly.

The GOP has somehow believed it could oppress "minorities" with impunity... there would always be enough powerful white men with privileges to protect, to enable them in their evil.

But women are not a "minority."

If they thought we were uppity back in the seventies....?

They ain't seen NOTHIN' yet.

The whirlwind is coming.

determinedly,
Bright

Dear Lincoln Project...

Dear Lincoln Project,

I'm grateful to you.

We share a few values: Love for our country. Respect for the Constitution. Belief that a government should not wantonly disregard its responsibilities to its citizens and our neighbors in the world community. An understanding of the power of unity, humanity, and shared sacrifice to achieve great things. Maybe some others.

We both recognize some existential threats to our nation: A would-be authoritarian fascist dictator who desperately wants to retain his grip on the levers of power and continue destroying the democratic institutions of our nation, and a major political party that has traded its responsibility to govern in the broader interests of all citizens for the support of a toxic minority that enables it to retain its grip on the levers of power. (There's a theme here, right?)

In the face of these existential threats, you have stepped up, and put your not-inconsiderable talents at the service of our country to meet them. And you have done so at some personal sacrifice- as you noted, none of you are likely to get the kind of satisfying, lucrative employment you formerly enjoyed from Republican Party sources. You have walked your talk with amazing grace, and I respect that.

There are some things we will probably always differ on: It concerns me that although you see the roots of the Republican Party's devolution in its tolerance of racist opportunism and willful embrace of disunity and division as a tool for retaining power, you don't seem to make a connection between this and movement conservatism's definition of "freedom" as "people (including corporations) should have the least possible restraint on their choices regardless of how much that puts the well-being of their neighbors, communities, and posterity at risk."

But let's put that aside, for now. I think we have some opportunities to continue to achieve the things we do agree on, and advance the values we do share, without putting too much strain on the places we will probably always differ.

Should we succeed in electing, and installing, a Biden Administration, I hope you might be willing to discuss the challenges that Administration will face in communicating with our painfully-divided citizenry. Your experience and skills could be valuable in helping restore the trust of Americans in our government- and without that trust, we will face continual and costly challenges in healing the fabric of our nation.

Checks and balances are critical, but so is that trust. Government earns the trust of citizens by acting in their interests, but also by being transparent, honest, and communicating effectively. I am pretty sure that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have bedrock commitment to that transparency and honesty in their governance, and they will need plenty of skilled help in communicating effectively.

If you don't feel able to provide active assistance to a new Administration in building trust, might you be willing to simply refrain from working against it?

Think about it.

hopefully,
Bright